MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump accepts midterm defeat but says Republicans would have won “in a landslide” had he been on the ballot

“We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out,” he said

US President Donald Trump said he accepts the results of the midterm elections, in which Democrats regained control of both chambers of Congress, and signalled willingness to negotiate with the opposition, but blamed the Republican defeat on his absence from the ballot and threatened to veto the new Congress’s legislation.

“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” Trump told The New York Times. “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out.” In a call to Fox News he admitted being “a little surprised” — “I thought we’d do better; we had tremendous rallies” — and acknowledged that Democrats “did a good job”. He told Politico he spoke with Democratic leaders at around 11 p.m. on Tuesday and would rather strike deals than spend his final two years vetoing legislation; according to NBC News, he said several newly elected Democrats had called him, though he did not name them. He cited immigration as a possible area of cooperation, according to CNBC.

His tone on social media was very different. Before polls closed on the West Coast, he wrote on his Truth Social platform: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”, despite having spent weeks urging supporters to vote “as if I were on the ballot”. An hour after his conversation with Democrats, he posted an image of a red cap bearing the word “VETO”, a reference to his threat to block the new Congress’s legislation. “It’s one of the strongest powers a president has,” he told Fox News. “They send me crazy proposals and I veto them. After a couple of months of vetoes, they ask: ‘How can we get this done?’ And we work together.”

Trump also said he would “become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost”, and claimed without evidence that Fox News “bears responsibility for these losses” by giving airtime to the opposition. He criticised Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, defeated by Democrat Gina Hinojosa, for turning “moderate”, and said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates such as Darline Graham in South Carolina and Ken Paxton in Texas, both of whom lost their Senate races.

The defeat confirms the fear Trump himself voiced in January before his party’s lawmakers, when he warned that if they lost the midterms, Democrats would find “a reason” to impeach him for a third time. According to the Associated Press, impeachment of the president or members of his Cabinet “is not off the table”. With control of both chambers, Democrats will also be able to block his legislative agenda and open investigations.

Democratic leaders celebrated the result. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called it a “generational remake of the Senate map”, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said “the American people are crying out for transformational change”.

His acceptance of the result contrasts with his refusal to concede defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, which he still does not acknowledge. Trump will leave the White House in January 2029 and cannot run again, so the defeat also opens the race to succeed him in the Republican Party.